Sunday, 19 April 2009

• Prayer: Why Can’t You Always Get What You Want? (Apologies to Mr. Jagger)

   by mr willow
  
  Here’s a thought about prayer. Sometimes people get exactly what they pray for. Other times they don’t. What’s up? Is God unreliable? Does it show that “answered prayer” is just a lucky coincidence? And, either way, why pray if the answer isn’t certain?

  One commenter on Revelife recently put it this way:

  …if a person doesn't believe that God is going to act the same way in every other case... why bother being a Christian?  I mean, if prayer works for you, but it doesn't work for the guy down the street, why should he bother?  Why should people believe in a deity that doesn't follow rules?  How on earth would you ever know what to do if doing one thing got you a certain result one day, and doing the same thing the next week got you the opposite result?
  

  The author of that particular comment is not herself a Christian, but that doesn’t much matter—I suspect many believers might not know the answer to this either. There’s a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation out there about prayer, and this question is a good opportunity to put a few things in perspective. I'm obviously not able to exhaustively cover the subject of prayer, which has filled many volumes, but I think I can offer a few good starting points.
  

  Let’s break it down in simply: What this line of argument objects is that there’s no “deity that follows rules”—that is, two people might pray to God for the same thing and get two different answers. For that matter, the same person might pray to God for the same thing at two different times and get two different answers. Whatever else we can say about prayer, it’s obvious to everyone, saints and skeptics alike, that prayer doesn’t work like a magic charm or a chemical formula.

  I’m glad. If it did work that way, it would prove the Christian view of prayer incorrect.

  If you want a religion that offers you a magic machine that always produces the same results whenever you push the right buttons, I’m afraid Christianity won’t help you much. (Some televangelists may tell you otherwise, but they also think Donald Trump hair is a good idea, so their judgment is clearly questionable.) God is not a mindless machine that must always follow the rules, but a personal being who makes the rules. He has intelligence, emotions, wisdom, foresight, and the ability to make decisions. He’s somebody we can get to know, love, and trust.

  Christianity does not offer a magical formula; it offers a heavenly Father. The point of prayer is asking God about something, and asking requires that He can make a decision about it—ideally, it requires that you submit to His decision about it. When you think about it seriously, you have to realize it’s very much for the best: If every time you asked God to do something He did it without any qualification, you wouldn’t have a God; you’d have a genie without a bottle. This kind of thinking was admirably debunked by C. S. Lewis:

  …God has left Himself a discretionary power. Had He not done so, prayer would be an activity too dangerous for man and we should have the horrible state of things envisaged by Juvenal: “Enormous prayers which Heaven in anger grants.”
  
  Prayers are not always—in the crude, factual sense of the word—“granted.” This is not because prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it “works” at all it works unlimited by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it; except on that condition prayer would destroy us. It is not unreasonable for a headmaster to say, “Such and such things you may do according to the fixed rules of this school. But such and such other things are too dangerous to be left to general rules. If you want to do them you must come and make a request and talk over the whole matter with me in my study. And then—we'll see.”

  (God in the Dock, “Work and Prayer”)

  What’s truly important is not that God gives you things; it’s that you have a good relationship with Him. The main point of praying is not to get the things you need; it’s to trust in our Father, who cares about us and (incidentally) is also wise and good enough provide everything we really need. We are seeking not to get the gift but to get to know the giver. When you examine the Scriptures on prayer, you realize that’s precisely what they’re all saying:

  [Jesus speaking] Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:31-33)

  …casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)

  Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. (Psalm 37:4-5)

  [Jesus speaking] “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” (John 15:7)

  Once we understand God in this way—not as a formula to be worked, but as a Father to be trusted—the answer to the seeming dilemma is easy. Of course God is not obligated to give the same answer to two different people’s requests, any more than you or I are obligated to give the same answer to two different people’s requests. It all depends on the relationship between them.

  Suppose a father has three children. One of them hates him, distrusts him, and has spread rumors in public that he’s not really her biological father. The second loves his father very much, but has been hanging out with the wrong crowd lately and has a stash of drugs in his room. The third has been spending all her free time lately working in her father’s charitable organization feeding the homeless. Now suppose each of these children independently ask their father to give them $100. Will the father respond to each of them in exactly the same way? Of course not. The request is the same, but the requesters aren’t.

  Or again, suppose a child asks his father to buy him a chemistry set. The answer will probably be one thing if the child is a budding scientist who dreams of finding a cure for cancer, and another thing entirely if the child is clumsy and always manages to spill things on himself. What might be the best thing for one child would be the worst possible thing for another; conversely, what might be bad for the child now might be fine once they mature a bit more. If the decision is left up to the father, it may not necessarily be the decision the child wants. But, since the father loves his child, and is presumably more intelligent than the child may be, it will certainly be the decision that is best.

  Don’t misunderstand. My point is emphatically not “Whether or not your prayer gets answered depends on whether you’re good enough, or how much faith you have, or something like that.” It’s that it doesn’t depend on you at all. Your job is simply to seek God, not for what He does, but for who He is.

  No father—no person at all—wants a child or a friend who only shows up when they need something from him and never stick around to develop a relationship. Nobody wants “foul-weather friends.” But if you take the time to get to know God, you’ll find more and more that what you want lines up with what He wants for you. And when you pray those prayers that truly do line up with what God wants, there’s no power in earth or heaven that will stand in your way.

  God certainly does answer prayer—R. A. Torrey went so far as to say that the journals of George Mueller were conclusive proof of the existence of God. (If you don’t know who George Mueller is, drop everything and go find out about him right now. It will change your life. I’m not exaggerating.) But that’s not the reason to bother being a Christian. The reason—at least, the reason that has to do with prayer—is that you can find peace in handing over your worries to Someone who can handle them. The bigger reason is that God offers forgiveness, restoration, new beginnings, new life, unfailing love... and those are a few requests He does always grant to whoever asks Him. 
  

  For further reading:

  You just knew I was going to mention R. A. Torrey, didn’t you? There’s at least half a dozen fantastic articles about prayer on the Archive; a great one to start with is The Prayer of Faith. Other classic authors on the subject of prayer are Andrew Murray, E. M. Bounds, A. W. Tozer, and (of course) George Mueller. Go to it.

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